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Jesus Talks With a Samaritan Woman
1 Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that
he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— 2
although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his
disciples. 3 So he left Judea and went back once more to
Galilee.
4 Now he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a
town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob
had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and
Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the
well. It was about noon.
7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said
to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had
gone into the town to buy food.)
9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I
am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For
Jews do not associate with Samaritans.
10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and
who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked
him and he would have given you living water.”
11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw
with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living
water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us
the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and
his flocks and herds?”
13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will
be thirsty again, 14 but those who drink the water I give
them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will
become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal
life.”
15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so
that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to
draw water.”
16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”
17 “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her,
“You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact
is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is
not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a
prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but
you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in
Jerusalem.”
21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is
coming when you will worship the Father neither on this
mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what
you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation
is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come
when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the
Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the
Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must
worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called
Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain
everything to us.”
26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I
am he.”
The Disciples Rejoin Jesus
27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised
to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do
you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to
the town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who
told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?”
30 They came out of the town and made their way toward him.
31 Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat
something.”
32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you
know nothing about.”
33 Then his disciples said to each other, “Could
someone have brought him food?”
34 “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who
sent me and to finish his work. 35 Don’t you have a saying,
‘It’s still four months until harvest?’ I tell you, open
your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.
36 Even now those who reap draw their wages, even now they
harvest the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the
reaper may be glad together. 37 Thus the saying ‘One sows
and another reaps’ is true. 38 I sent you to reap what you
have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you
have reaped the benefits of their labor.”
Many Samaritans Believe
39 Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in
him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything
I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they
urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41 And
because of his words many more became believers.
42 They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just
because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves,
and we know that this man really is the Savior of the
world.”
Jesus Heals the Official’s Son
43 After the two days he left for Galilee. 44 (Now
Jesus himself had pointed out that prophets have no honor in
their own country. 45 When he arrived in Galilee, the
Galileans welcomed him. They had seen all that he had done
in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, for they also had
been there.
46 Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had
turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal
official whose son lay sick at Capernaum. 47 When this man
heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went
to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was
close to death.
48 “Unless you people see signs and wonders,” Jesus
told him, “you will never believe.”
49 The royal official said, “Sir, come down before my
child dies.”
50 “Go,” Jesus replied, “your son will live.” The man
took Jesus at his word and departed. 51 While he was still
on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy
was living. 52 When he inquired as to the time when his son
got better, they said to him, “Yesterday, at one in the
afternoon, the fever left him.”
53 Then the father realized that this was the exact
time at which Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.”
So he and his whole household believed.
54 This was the second sign Jesus performed after
coming from Judea to Galilee.
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